An intranet is a private computer network contained within an enterprise and conventionally includes one or more intranet servers in communication with multiple user computers. An intranet may be comprised of interlinked local area networks and may also use leased-lines in a wide-area network. An intranet may or may not include connections to the outside Internet. Intranets conventionally utilize various Internet protocols and, in general, often look like private versions of the Internet. An intranet user conventionally accesses an intranet server via a web browser running locally on his/her computer. An exemplary web browser is Netscape Navigator.RTM. (Netscape Communications Corporation, Mountain View, Calif.).
Information, applications and other resources (collectively referred to herein as "content") are conventionally delivered from an intranet server to a web browser on a user's computer in the form of hypertext documents or "web pages." As is known to those skilled in this art, a web page is conventionally formatted via a standard page description language such as HyperText Markup Language (HTML), and typically displays text and graphics, and can play sound, animation, and video data. HTML provides basic document formatting and allows a web page developer to specify hypertext links (typically manifested as highlighted text) to other servers and files. When a user selects a particular hypertext link, a web browser reads and interprets the address, called a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) associated with the link, connects the web browser with the web server at that address, and makes an HTTP request for the web page identified in the link. The web server then sends the requested web page to the client in HTML format which the browser interprets and displays to the user.
Intranets are conventionally used to share content among the employees of an enterprise. When intranets first emerged, content tended to be focused towards a particular set of users. However, as intranets have become more integral with the day-to-day operations of an enterprise, intranet content has become available for many different sets of users. Unfortunately, the task of organizing, distributing and updating large amounts of intranet content can be difficult. Furthermore it can be difficult for users to keep track of and locate content relevant to their jobs.
FIGS. 1 and 2 illustrate exemplary content-containing web pages (referred to hereinafter as "content pages") displayed via a web browser in communication with an intranet server. In FIG. 1, the displayed content on the content page 10 includes a list 12 of available "Administrative Documents". In FIG. 2, a user has selected item 12e from the content page list 12 of FIG. 1, and a list of "1998 Function Reports" 14 has been displayed within a second content page 16, as a result.
Users of an intranet are typically interested only in a subset of the total content available through an intranet. As a result, intranet users often create "bookmarks" or shortcuts to particular content. For example, a user of the intranet content pages illustrated in FIGS. 1 and 2 may only have an interest in the unit of content entitled "1998 Guidelines for Client Managers" (FIG. 2). Rather than accessing the content by displaying the content pages 10, 16 of FIGS. 1 and 2, a user can bookmark and store the URL for this unit content ("1998 Guidelines for Client Managers") within his or her web browser. The URL for the unit of content entitled "1998 Guidelines for Client Managers" is: (http://intranet/admin/manage_com/1998_function_reports/ 1998_guidelines_client_mgrs.pdf).
Bookmarks are created within the web browser of a user's computer and are typically stored locally on the user's computer. Unfortunately, the use of bookmarks can be disadvantageous for several reasons. Locally stored bookmarks may become inoperative if content referenced by a bookmark is relocated to another URL. Furthermore, a user may not have access to his or her locally stored bookmarks if he or she uses a different computer or device to access the intranet.
Often, management of an enterprise wants to direct intranet users to specific content. Unfortunately, it may be difficult for an intranet administrator to force users to update their locally stored bookmarks to reflect changes in the location of content or to reflect new content. As a result, intranet administrators often deploy content pages of available URLs to help users find relevant content. In effect, these content pages act as index pages for the content of an intranet. Unfortunately, for intranets containing large amounts of content, a user may have to search through large numbers of URLs to locate specific content. For example, a Java programmer seeking content related to his/her programming job may have to initially access an index content page, then an engineering content page, then a programming content page, and then a Java content page to locate the particular content. For many enterprises, the amount of available content may make the task of locating specific content difficult.
Intranet usage can increase computer network traffic, especially in enterprises where many users are accessing the same content from intranet servers. Such increased traffic may also cause "bursts" of network traffic, such as when a number of users log into an intranet site in the morning, which may require network resources to be able to handle these bursts which may be significantly more traffic than the steady state traffic level of the network. Increased network traffic may hamper the availability of content. In addition, some requested content may require some type of transformation in order to be viewable by various users' computers. Unfortunately, content transformation may increase processing demands on the server which can degrade server performance, especially during times of peak demand.